I wrote this a few years ago for a journalism class. I think we’d been reading some critical theory/Marxism-influenced articles in another class so, with all those ideas about equal opportunity and the like swarming around, I decided to write what I thought was a funny, satirical essay about how “the people” were all going to become “comrades” in journalism, with Facebook taking the place of every other outlet for news media. I thought it was funny, but my professor seemed more disturbed than anything else, so maybe I didn’t really get it right (or maybe I did) . . . I dunno. I’m reblogging it anyway. Check it out:

Our progeny will look back on us and laugh at our arrogance. Professional journalism? Nothing will seem so backwards, so banal, and so reminiscent of late-era capitalist audacity, because the future journalists will be the people, the citizens of the world, and they’ll post their stories through Facebook.

There was a demand for professional media before the internet-age, yet internet use has been widespread for over a decade, and since the arrival of Facebook the professional media’s utility has constricted so much that it will soon be completely taken over by Facebook.

The people of the future will not accept the elitist news values of the professional class because in the future, the most important news will come from Facebook friends. People will use SMS text software and smartphones to provide continuous Facebook status updates, and all updates will be aggregated through Facebook’s News Feed application. Video and other multimedia will be linked to and streamed on the Facebook Wall, and Facebook Notes will replace blogging, allowing Note writers to reach the exact audience they intend to target through Facebook’s “tag” function.

Those interested in media unrelated to their friend networks will subscribe to regional networks that aggregate the most popular News Feed posts in a region. Subject-oriented networks will aggregate the most viewed Facebook posts and Notes related to their subject. Users will receive political updates directly from politicians’ Facebook fan pages.

The history books will refer to our era as The Great Transition before The Media Revolution, and think on the time before as a dark age when news was nothing but a bourgeois commodity arising out of control of the means of productions by media conglomerates and multinational interests. A glimmer of horror will cross people’s eyes when they think about the days when everyone was told what to think by the newspapers and the broadcasting corporations of America.

There will be no professional press because there will be no filter between consumers of information and the information itself. All news information will be categorized on Facebook by region and topic interests, and instead of asking, “What was on the news today?” people will ask, “What were the big News Feed posts today?” Of course, most people won’t have to ask, because they will have 24-7 access through their cell phones and computers.

All other news media will soon collapse, because people will satiate their demand for news through Facebook. All current information will be found out through Facebook, and no one will be paid to report news, because people will freely report the news information important to them.

The professional journalists will cry out in fury against Facebook, yet their cries will not be heard by the government or the people. The information class will fall from their bourgeois superiority, and there will be no working journalists or advertisers. All non-fiction media will perish in a stew of its own conceit. Facebook will annihilate all barriers to entry in the information economy, and everyone will make the news.